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Wednesday, April 25, 2012

The Next Phase

Beaming to the aid of a stricken Romulan ship, Geordi and Ro are lost in the transporter with a radioactive Romulan gizmo. They are pronounced dead. (Is it Contract Renegotiation Season already?!)

Unseen, the duo awaken in the ship's corridors and discover they cannot be heard or felt, either. Although they are solid to each other. (Some heavy hand-holding action ensues..!)

Ro believes she and Geordi are dead spirits. The Bajorans call them borhyas. Geordi can't wrap his head around that. "Are you saying I'm some blind ghost with clothes?"

She tries to make peace with her life, while Geordi tries to figure out the science.

Ro's a little worried what Riker would say at her funeral. (Ever since she "Ro'd his boat".)

The Romulan Captain was also cloaked and phased in the inverter accident. And he's tangibly dismayed to be intangible!

The baddie chases Ro through walls all across deck 17, until she's struggling for her life in the middle of somebody's dinner date. Geordi body-checks her attacker through a bulkhead into airless space. Sucks to be that guy!

The pair of ersatz borhyas crash their own memorial party in Ten-Forward. Desperately overloading their new disruptor, they get noticed by Data and finally de-phased.

So how did they keep breathing, seeing, hearing, and walking on the floors? Immaterial! Ba-dum-bum!

Geordi says they didn't eat for two days. For the first time on this my, I dunno, 25th viewing, I wondered about ghost poops. Did they do their business, and, if so, is it still cloaked and phased somewhere? That takes care of my heebies, but I still gots the jeebies.

"The Next Phase" had mind-blowing visual effects & sound for the period, and Ro gets to run a lot and kick some Romulan bottom. Endowed with the super-powers of Kitty Pryde, Ro and Geordi could've gone into the super-hero biz as Cloak & Dagger! (Unless that name's already taken.)

And forget the military applications: just think what a phasing cloak can do for the expanding field of voyeurism!